In This Place Called Prison

In This Place Called Prison PDF Author: Rachel Ellis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520384539
Category : Mapleside Prison (not real name) Religion and/in prisons United States 21st century Women prisoners "shine a light on the tension between freedom and constraint experienced through religion in prison"(p4)
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
"In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid and unique examination of religion within prison and argues for its key role among some of society's most vulnerable. Although prison is defined by control--from rules and routines to mandatory labor and monitored visits--for many, religion offers a way out. Religion challenges what it means to be punished and affords community and connection in the face of fear and isolation. Rachel Ellis spent twelve months conducting ethnographic research inside the guarded gates of Mapleside Prison, a US state women's correctional facility, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and religious volunteers. Through their stories, Ellis sets the scene of mass incarceration today, detailing how contemporary prisons both reflect and worsen the systemic racial, social, and gender inequalities characteristic of the American landscape of profound stratification. She also offers insight into how religion relates to the carceral system, tracing the role of religious institutions throughout the history of prison punishment. Offering a trenchant account of how religion collides and colludes with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and control, In This Place Called Prison speaks to the human quest for dignity and light in even the darkest of places"--

In This Place Called Prison

In This Place Called Prison PDF Author: Rachel Ellis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520384539
Category : Mapleside Prison (not real name) Religion and/in prisons United States 21st century Women prisoners "shine a light on the tension between freedom and constraint experienced through religion in prison"(p4)
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In This Place Called Prison offers a vivid and unique examination of religion within prison and argues for its key role among some of society's most vulnerable. Although prison is defined by control--from rules and routines to mandatory labor and monitored visits--for many, religion offers a way out. Religion challenges what it means to be punished and affords community and connection in the face of fear and isolation. Rachel Ellis spent twelve months conducting ethnographic research inside the guarded gates of Mapleside Prison, a US state women's correctional facility, talking with hundreds of incarcerated women, staff, and religious volunteers. Through their stories, Ellis sets the scene of mass incarceration today, detailing how contemporary prisons both reflect and worsen the systemic racial, social, and gender inequalities characteristic of the American landscape of profound stratification. She also offers insight into how religion relates to the carceral system, tracing the role of religious institutions throughout the history of prison punishment. Offering a trenchant account of how religion collides and colludes with the state in an enduring tension between freedom and control, In This Place Called Prison speaks to the human quest for dignity and light in even the darkest of places"--

A Prison Called School

A Prison Called School PDF Author: Maure Ann Metzger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475815778
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Why are our educational institutions and practices such a poor fit for so many students? A Prison Called School addresses the complex issues that place many students at a disadvantage as they try to survive yet another hurdle in life—school. Although some students are able to navigate and succeed in the current system, other students struggle to survive a system that is unable to meet their needs. For those students, school can feel like a twelve-year prison sentence. Students who cannot fit the outdated, one-size-fits-all model, are further penalized by a system that blames the struggling student rather than holding the institution accountable. For students to thrive in school, the system, not the students, must change in deep and substantial ways. A Prison Called School is a powerful catalyst for creating the empowering, engaging, and effective learning environments that all students need to succeed in school and life.

Prison by Any Other Name

Prison by Any Other Name PDF Author: Maya Schenwar
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097701X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration” Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, “cogent critique” (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state. Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers “a wealth of critical insights” that will help readers “tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down” and “make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration” (The Brooklyn Rail). With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.

A Country Called Prison, 2nd Edition

A Country Called Prison, 2nd Edition PDF Author: John D. Carl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197768318
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The second edition of A Country Called Prison discusses how mass incarceration has led to a population of individuals inside the United States who have become legal aliens in their own land, and addresses the consequences. Besides discussing the evolution of the problem, it poses practical solutions to correct the path on which this country is set.

Until We Reckon

Until We Reckon PDF Author: Danielle Sered
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974800
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
The award-winning “radically original” (The Atlantic) restorative justice leader, whose work the Washington Post has called “totally sensible and totally revolutionary,” grapples with the problem of violent crime in the movement for prison abolition A National Book Foundation Literature for Justice honoree A Kirkus “Best Book of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia” Winner of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Journalism Award Finalist for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice In a book Democracy Now! calls a “complete overhaul of the way we’ve been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice,” Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy. Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Called “innovative” and “truly remarkable” by The Atlantic and “a top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate” by Kirkus Reviews, Sered’s Until We Reckon argues with searing force and clarity that our communities are safer the less we rely on prisons and jails as a solution for wrongdoing. Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt—none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence.

American Prison

American Prison PDF Author: Shane Bauer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735223602
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

Prison Truth

Prison Truth PDF Author: William J. Drummond
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520298365
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
San Quentin State Prison, California’s oldest prison and the nation’s largest, is notorious for once holding America’s most dangerous prisoners. But in 2008, the Bastille-by-the-Bay became a beacon for rehabilitation through the prisoner-run newspaper the San Quentin News. Prison Truth tells the story of how prisoners, many serving life terms, transformed the prison climate from what Johnny Cash called a living hell to an environment that fostered positive change in inmates’ lives. Award-winning journalist William J. Drummond takes us behind bars, introducing us to Arnulfo García, the visionary prisoner who led the revival of the newspaper. Drummond describes how the San Quentin News, after a twenty-year shutdown, was recalled to life under an enlightened warden and the small group of local retired newspaper veterans serving as advisers, which Drummond joined in 2012. Sharing how officials cautiously and often unwittingly allowed the newspaper to tell the stories of the incarcerated, Prison Truth illustrates the power of prison media to humanize the experiences of people inside penitentiary walls and to forge alliances with social justice networks seeking reform.

God in Captivity

God in Captivity PDF Author: Tanya Erzen
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807089982
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
An eye-opening account of how and why evangelical Christian ministries are flourishing in prisons across the United States It is by now well known that the United States’ incarceration rate is the highest in the world. What is not broadly understood is how cash-strapped and overcrowded state and federal prisons are increasingly relying on religious organizations to provide educational and mental health services and to help maintain order. And these religious organizations are overwhelmingly run by nondenominational Protestant Christians who see prisoners as captive audiences. Some twenty thousand of these Evangelical Christian volunteers now run educational programs in over three hundred US prisons, jails, and detention centers. Prison seminary programs are flourishing in states as diverse as Texas and Tennessee, California and Illinois, and almost half of the federal prisons operate or are developing faith-based residential programs. Tanya Erzen gained inside access to many of these programs, spending time with prisoners, wardens, and members of faith-based ministries in six states, at both male and female penitentiaries, to better understand both the nature of these ministries and their effects. What she discovered raises questions about how these ministries and the people who live in prison grapple with the meaning of punishment and redemption, as well as what legal and ethical issues emerge when conservative Christians are the main and sometimes only outside forces in a prison system that no longer offers even the pretense of rehabilitation. Yet Erzen also shows how prison ministries make undeniably positive impacts on the lives of many prisoners: men and women who have no hope of ever leaving prison can achieve personal growth, a sense of community, and a degree of liberation within the confines of their cells. With both empathy and a critical eye, God in Captivity grapples with the questions of how faith-based programs serve the punitive regime of the prison, becoming a method of control behind bars even as prisoners use them as a lifeline for self-transformation and dignity.

Running the Books

Running the Books PDF Author: Avi Steinberg
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767931319
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Avi Steinberg is stumped. After defecting from yeshiva to attend Harvard, he has nothing but a senior thesis on Bugs Bunny to show for himself. While his friends and classmates advance in the world, Steinberg remains stuck at a crossroads, his “romantic” existence as a freelance obituary writer no longer cutting it. Seeking direction (and dental insurance) Steinberg takes a job running the library counter at a Boston prison. He is quickly drawn into the community of outcasts that forms among his bookshelves—an assortment of quirky regulars, including con men, pimps, minor prophets, even ghosts—all searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. Steinberg recounts their daily dramas with heartbreak and humor in this one-of-a-kind memoir—a piercing exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man’s earnest attempt to find his place in the world.

A Place Called Harmony

A Place Called Harmony PDF Author: Jodi Thomas
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425250784
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Jodi Thomas tells the story of the three hard-luck men who first settled the town of Harmony, where last chances and long-awaited dreams collide.